Tomorrow (2/14) is the last day to see artist Sam Friedman’s ambitious solo show “Happy Places” at Joshua Liner Gallery in NYC. We caught up with him last night over text message to talk about all things enjoyable.

Beaches, sunsets, lobsters, bongs, legs. These are your happy places?

Pretty much. They’re some of the things in life to enjoy.

They all go hand in hand. Can you tell me about the Great Wall of Happy. There’s 50 pieces there. What was the process like to create them?

I worked on all of them at one time. They were all laid out on a wall of my studio, while I was painting them, in a way similar to the way they were hung in the gallery. I liked the way they look on the wall hanging as one unit, but each piece is definitely its own painting.

How many jars of paint do you think you used?

Ha ha Ha ha ha… Honestly, I don’t even have a ballpark idea.

Do you ever see a difference in your subject matter depending on the season?

Nope.

Yeah. I guess a happy place is an all the time thing.

Maybe that’s the goal?

Definitely, it’s my goal in life. Can you talk briefly about the composition of your work? With the exception of the large painting in the back, the subjects are cropped. Is there a way you plan this or is it spontaneous?

Yeah, they are loosely planned out by doing small compositional drawings on file cards. The drawings are usually nothing more than a few lines and a circle.

So what’s next for you? More happy places?

I’ve got some new painting themes that I am working on, but they are top secret.

Sure the show isn’t up any longer, but that doesn’t mean it can’t live on through the internet. Featuring artists with affiliations to Kinfolk, the Williamsburg-by-Japan mecca of culture, the family show was a banger. Next up in the Kinfolk 94 space is a one night only affair tomorrow night (1/22) for The Flop Box’s ABC Zine release party featuring some of your favorite graffiti artists. Enjoy.

By the time that you’ve finished looking through the entirety of this massive group show curated by Ryan Travis Christian, you’ll have more thoughts than you previously had on the quacking creature. Whether those thoughts are good or bad is completely up to you. Just know that there’ll be more.

By the time you read this, Wayne White’s Invisible Ruler will be closed. The exhibition at Joshua Liner Gallery was Wayne’s return to NYC, and an outstanding success. Earlier this week, we caught up with Wayne in Los Angeles and proceeded to talk about life, art, and his life in art.

TWBE: Let’s start from the beginning. You grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, when did you first discover art?

Wayne White: That’s a tough question. I guess I discovered art in drawing, and that’s one of my earliest memories. I discovered drawing just on my own as every kid does. I didn’t know it was called art and I didn’t really know what an artist was for a long time. There were no galleries or museums or any culture around when I was kid at that time. I came to it naturally from just a love of drawing and of course as I grew I learned about art history and artists and everything. My mother was where I got my biggest influence from. She was the artistic one in the family and loved to decorate, collect antiques and stuff. So she knew a little bit about art. When I was a little bitty kid I remember her saying, “Well Wayne could be a commercial artist one day.” She’d say that to adults, I overheard her because she didn’t say it directly to me. I would sit there as a little kid and I would imagine an artist that comes on between TV shows on the commercial and he’s standing there painting a portrait and it’s a commercial you know… (Laughter). And you get a smock – I remember it as clear as a bell. The vision I had in my head. You’ve got a smock on and there’s a pedestal with a bowl of fruit on it and an easel. It’s a commercial of a guy painting. I thought that’s what a commercial artist was.

So from there you went to art school and studied abstract painting at a college in Tennessee?

Yeah as I grew in Chattanooga, I went to high school and stuff and I was the school artist and a cartoonist on the school newspapers. That’s what I originally wanted to be as a kid was a cartoonist because that was my idea of an artist. And then I went to Middle Tennessee State University and I majored in painting because I just thought that painting was a serious thing to do. It’s what real artist did. I took four years of painting and art history and stuff, and that’s where I really learned about the art world and the history of art. The history part of it was just as important as the actual doing of it because that was a great education for me. Just learning about the past. I studied abstract – my painting teacher was an abstract expressionist. That was my first serious foray into painting, abstract painting.

You never strayed from that at all? You never tried to paint cartoons or anything?

Well, I kept drawing underground cartoons for the college newspaper and I always had an interest in cartoons. And my abstract paintings had a very cartoony line and I was interested in finding the gap between abstract paintings and cartoons which they share a lot, and I was a big fan of Phillip Guston and Willem de Kooning who both had very cartoony lines. Cartoons were never very far from my mind and then the minute that I graduated from four years of that abstract expressionism and everything, I got back into comics because I saw Raw Magazine and I knew this was the next generation for undergrounds. It was full of exciting great art and Raw Magazine is what got me convinced to become a cartoonist again. It inspired me to move to New York City.

What year was that?

It was 1980 when I first saw Raw. I was in Nashville where I lived for a year after I graduated.

When did you move to New York?

I didn’t get to New York until January of ’82. I spent another year in Nashville saving my dough (laughs) and then I made the leap. And in 1982 it was pretty rough and ready you know. I lived downtown in the East Village and it was still pretty funky, but it was a great time for the arts. A time when a young artist could afford to live in Manhattan and it was New York City so it was great. It was very exciting. It was my best education.

Three solid shows opened in the parched City of Angels at the beginning of September: Eddie Martinez at Michael Kohn, KAWS at Honor Fraser, and Sam Falls at Hannah Hoffman. Here’s a look through all of them.

In Kiss My Aura, his latest show at Slow Culture in Los Angeles, artist Travis Millard has taken his pancake art, covered it in resin (not syrup), and used the plate as a frame. Oh, he also made some rad drawings too.

Go With The Flow is a group show currently on view at The Hole that explores the use of sprayed paint by 19 contemporary artists. Ranging from atomized paint traditionally used on automotives, to airbrush and aerosol, the show’s works come to life on walls covered in plastic sheeting that one can only assume were placed to mimic the environment where the art was created, and not for cleaning up a Patrick Bateman type slaughter. Go With The Flow runs through August 23, 2014.

The World's Best Ever: Design, Fashion, Art, Music, Photography, Lifestyle, Entertainment 2015 | the worlds best ever. all rights reserved. powered by word press. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.